Napa Valley Books

When talk turns to Napa Valley royalty, Robert Mondavi and the Mondavi family indisputably qualify as the ruling monarchy of the Napa Valley –and frankly the US- wine industry. With an almost biblical or Shakespearean flair, the Mondavi family story of the last 100 years is one of passion, pettiness, family squabbling, wild success, dramatic failure, and of course, wine. In her new book, The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty, author Julia Flynn delivers a masterful narrative on the Mondavi clan. IntoWine.com recently had the privilege of chatting with Julia about the book and the evolution of the Mondavi family story.

James Conaway picks up the story begun a decade ago in his earlier book about Napa Valley, the premier American wine country and a place synonymous with the good life. By now the struggle over the valley's future has grown sharper and its success more glaring. Awash in dollars generated by the boom economy of the 1990s and the social ambitions it inspired, Napa is beset by too much of a good thing: new arrivals determined to have a vineyard of their own despite the fact that available land is running out, cult-wine producers in thrall to fabulously expensive “rocket juice” (cabernet sauvignon) that few locals can afford, established families wishing to hold on to the old ways, and camp followers caught up in the glamour of it all.

When National Geographic sent Charles O'Rear to photograph a little-known region of Napa Valley for a book about rural America, he was immediately enthralled by the area�s natural beauty and vibrant tradition of winemaking. He soon made the valley his home and in the twenty-three years since, he has watched it grow from an obscure, secluded hollow in the California landscape to an internationally recognized food and wine destination.